


Flowers for Catherine

by popsicletheduck



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Anxiety, Bruce tries, Gen, Grieving, Post-Lazarus Jason, Young Jason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2019-07-24 22:58:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16184966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popsicletheduck/pseuds/popsicletheduck
Summary: Newly adopted Jason Todd does what he knows to honor his mom.Many years later, some things have changed, and some things haven't.





	Flowers for Catherine

The wind blew achingly cold down the street. Jason shivered and retreated further back into his jacket.

Still, things weren’t bad. After all, things had been much worse. Now he had an actual winter coat and shoes without holes and the promise of warm food in a warm house.

Even over a year later, it didn’t quite feel real. Sometimes his gratitude for Bruce and Alfred rose up until it choked him and he had to look away because dammit, Jason Todd, street tough orphan, doesn’t cry.

But as incredibly grateful as he was, there were some things he just needed to do himself. This was one of them. 

Not that it’d been a successful afternoon. He’d slipped out of school early, fighting down the guilt that twisted his stomach, and now the grey clouds above were beginning to darken with oncoming night and he still had nothing to show from his search.

It was stupidly cold, especially considering it was mid April. The snow had stuck around for months now, grey piles of ice that stubbornly refused to melt, despite spring officially beginning almost a month ago.

Dammit, he wasn’t going to give up...he couldn’t give up...not with nothing. But it was getting dark, and he had to go back to the Manor for patrol...No, he couldn’t go empty handed…

In the end, he got lucky. He found what he was looking for mere moments before he reached his destination. 

Jason scaled the rusting fence with ease, his backpack only a minor annoyance, carefully clutching his prize - a single, bedraggled dandelion he’d found growing in a crack in the sidewalk just outside the graveyard.

Inside, the ground was dangerously icy. There was no path. Very few came here. This was a cemetery for Gotham’s poor, and here, those actually buried were the lucky ones.

Hulking in the far corner was a massive windowless concrete building. The door was locked, but that was no problem for Jason. Once inside, the yellow beam from his flashlight illuminated row upon dusty row of undecorated urns - boxes, really - on shelves that stretched to the ceiling and far off into the darkness. The final resting spot of hundreds of the very poorest of the poor.

Jason made his way carefully through the maze of shelves, his footsteps echoing loudly in that cavernous room of the dead.

He...wasn’t scared. Of course not. He was Jason Todd, child of the streets, native of Crime Alley, partner to the g-d--m  _ Batman _ . He wasn’t scared. Still, it  _ was _ a little...spooky.

Eventually, his beam of light rested on a single urn, indistinguishable from the rest save for the name printed on its side.

Catherine Todd. 

Jason knelt and carefully wiped away the dust and remains of last year’s bouquet of dandelions, replacing them with the single flower he carried.

“Sorry it’s just one this year, Mom. I looked really hard, but the snow’s kept them from growing. I know, it’s April and there’s still snow. The people on TV keep saying it’s the longest winter Gotham’s had in over twenty years. But you don’t have to worry about me. Mr. Wayne’s still taking care of me. And...and I’m doing good, Mom. I think...you...I think you would be proud of me.”

If he cried in the dark, did it really matter? There was no one here to notice but the dead, and they weren’t speaking.

 

By the time Jason made it back to the Manor, night had fully fallen. He dumped his backpack and raced to the kitchen, hoping to at least grab something to eat before patrol. He skidded around the corner and almost ran face first into Alfred, still in the kitchen, still cooking.

“Master Jason. It’s good to finally see you.”

Oh no. Here came the lecture about skipping school early. He braced himself for that look of quiet disappointment that Alfred got that was a million times worse that shouting. 

But Alfred simply gestured to an empty chair. “Sit and eat your dinner, young sir.”

“What about patrol?” Jason managed to choke out around the lump in his throat.

“Master Bruce decided you deserved the night off. He has already left.”

Oh. That was his punishment.

It’s not like it mattered. Not really. He wasn’t going to skip school or come back late again. Today had been special circumstances. He wasn’t going to do it again.

Well. Until next year.

Jason was carefully settling himself on his seat and the kitchen counter when something caught his eye. A small bunch of yellow roses sitting next to his plate. He figured they must have been from Brucie’s latest girlfriend but...why were they just lying here? And why yellow roses? That seemed an odd choice.

Wait. There was a small card attached. If he could just…

_ For Catherine. _

Bruce’s handwriting. He didn’t know that Bruce knew anyone named...oh.

Oh.

_ Oh. _

“A-Alfred? Could you, um, maybe drive me back into Gotham tonight?”

“Of course, sir. But eat your dinner first.”

  
  


Jason rubbed his eyes and fell back against the door of the safe house with a soft thump. He didn’t want to be here. Not here, not today.

Being in Gotham was hard enough on a good day. But today…

But he hadn’t gone. Not in years. Because before he’d ran. Ran as far away from Gotham as he could, hid in some disgusting, run-down motel room with no windows and several bottles of booze and drank.

Because someone this day had become more. So much more.

He thought it’d been bad enough when he was a kid. When it was just his mom. But now…

Now it was real moms and birth moms and adopted fathers. It was a chorus of I-wasn’t-theres and I-couldn’t-save-yous and why-didn’t-yous. It was mourning and regret and guilt and anger and...and he couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t deal with it.

So he’d drank. Drank to forget it all. Drank until he woke up in a trashed room in a puddle of his own vomit, then walked out and didn’t look back.

But he was doing better. He was  _ trying _ to do better. And that meant being here today. Without booze.

It meant taking care of his responsibilities.

It meant picking dandelions. 

It had taken every ounce of strength he had to walk into that graveyard. He’d still been a block away when he’d broken out in a cold sweat.

Mud from last night’s storm splashed on his boots as he hopped the fence--

_ The blood dripping from his hands mixing with the mud and the rain-- _

Rowing of crumbling gravestones--

_ Padded walls close, too close, no way out, no way out nowayoutBatmanplease-- _

No. Even those buried here were ash. Just ash. Not people. Not bodies. Ash. Just ash.

He’d made it, somehow. Picked the lock and found her urn and left the flowers. Made it out. Made it back here.

Jason pushed himself up off the door. He was leaving. Getting out of this hellhole that held nothing but death, that twisted everything into darkness, where no one ca-

Something caught his eye. Something small and yellow sitting on the kitchen counter.

His breath caught in his throat. It-it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

It felt like a dream, or maybe a memory. But they were real, somehow, the bright yellow petals soft and smooth, the writing stark black against the pure white card.

_ For Catherine. _

Jason stood alone in the tiny kitchen, staring at the small bouquet of yellow roses resting in his hands.

If he cried alone, did it really matter? Because he’d found that sometimes the dead did speak, and it was a terribly, wonderfully bittersweet thing.


End file.
